The Princess and the Pea
Mira likes cleaning day: she’s realised we pile all her pillows up into one temporary high super-bed. Shown here, her taking advantage of super-bed while it lasts.
It must be love
This photo makes me melt: she is my little furry sidekick. We’re together all the time, and when we’re not, she runs to the door and does little pirouettes (which I call ‘tourniquets‘) when I come home. We nap together and she always finds the best place to curl up into (the small of my back, between my feet, along my arm with little head on my shoulder).
She brings me toys and leaves them in a heap at my feet when she wants to play. She will sit opposite me for half an hour straight when she wants food (I’ve never seen such insistence in an animal!).
In other words, I am completely and un-objectively smitten with my dog. And she knows that.
PS: Did I mention her little black nose?
Eye nose and ear
I was looking through our Lightroom catalogue the other day and found these – detail pictures Mira and I posed for on my birthday nearly 4 years ago.
I like them for the following reasons:
- in the first one, you can see my lentil!
- I have an unhealthy obsession with animals’ noses (and feet) so a close-up of an animal’s nose naturally blows my mind and excites me.
- the last one is slightly blurry and even shows the little raspberry I have behind my left ear.
So yes: today is a slow day and I don’t have much of a story to tell, nor do I feel good (crazy irregular heartbeat and palpitations included).
Which is when a large Lightroom catalogue comes in handy :)
Scooty Puff!
One of our favourite Futurama episodes has given us a funny quote for when we want Mira to move over on the couch (which is every time we want to sit down – that little monkey likes to spread).
It starts like this: ‘Scoot!’ – then ‘Scooty Puff!’, then ‘Scooty Puff Junior!’ as we try to nudge her to one side.
If we have really gotten into it by that point, we might add ‘Scooty Puff Junior suuuuucks!’ (which is why the Nibblonians upgraded Fry to Scooty Puff Senior – ‘the Doom Bringer’ – since Scooty Puff Junior fell apart).
I’m pretty sure I’ve lost most of you by this point.
Just watch ‘The Why of Fry‘ (season 4) and all will be explained.
PS: When you type ‘Scooty Puff’ into the Google search bar, it auto fills! We’re not the only ones with a slight obsession.
PPS: Same episode contains another great line: ‘Detecting trace amounts of mental activity!’. Oh, and also ‘Sometimes I fear we are cute’. Gold.
In the cover of darkness – how Earth Hour freaks out Mira
It’s that time of the year again! I’m not sure Shepard Fairey postcards are kicking around this year to announce it, but tonight at 8:30 we’ll be turning our lights off for Earth Hour.
Which will really disconcert Mira – and cause her to become clingy and shaky until the lights are back on. Don’t feel sorry for her, she’ll be spending an hour in my lap getting cuddles and kisses.
I will probably wake up with a few extra bruises tomorrow since my usual clumsy will be magnified by lack of light. Which reminds me: I must buy some candles today…
(Image is from here)
Supply vs. licking
Last night I informed Christian we were out of poultry toothpaste. I inform the poor man of a lot of things, most of probable little interest to him or likely to add anything to his life. I didn’t stop there: I declared I had no intention of buying more.
Christian: ‘Why?’
Me: ‘Because when I brush Mira’s teeth without toothpaste it works a lot better.’
Christian: ‘Oh really? She interferes that much licking like a little fool?’
Me: ‘Yes’.
He understood. Mira though, that’s another story.
(Image from here).
Mimi the doggie
There are so many reasons why Mira is awesome:
*She has a beard. Which she occasionally uses by putting it in my face to wake me when she wants in under the doona during the night. Always cute in the morning (during the night, meh).
*When she is in the back seat of the car, she leans into the turns (I call it ‘Surfing’).
*She is tiny and that alone cracks me up. My father nicknamed her ‘La Petite Peluche’ (the little soft toy) and this is how she is referred to by my whole family in France.
*She is the most loving, yet insistent (read pain-in-the-ass) little animal. So I guess that makes her me in dog form :)
*She makes me watch my language in the kitchen while I’m cooking because she knows if she hears swearing, I’ve dropped something on the floor (and whatever it is would disappear beyond that beard and get scoffed). She also occasionally stands at my feet for 20 minutes on end, waiting for things to drop.
*She fake kills things when she is playing with them and she makes it look adorable.
*She does the cutest little jumps and 360 turns.
*She loves to lick ice cubes when she’s very hot.
*She has a heightened sense of self after getting a bath (which results in even more insistence).
*She single-handedly made me a dog person, when before I only swore by cats.
By the way, this is how I am brushing up on my Sesame Street characters. And I honestly don’t know how I managed these pictures while laughing so hard and how they don’t look completely blurry. Christian wasn’t helping by narrating a fake wild life photography commentary in the background.
(My title was inspired by this song).
Joyeux Noël!
Every year we insist on getting into the Christmas spirit by turning our schnauzer into a mini Santa. Every year, she’s not impressed.
And these little suckers (chocolate-dipped hazelnut marbles, courtesy of Clotilde) are evil. Even more so when you put them in the freezer for 15 minutes before eating them. Our poor waistlines…
I hope you all had a very merry Christmas!
Go here if you want to experience the evil deliciousness of Clotilde’s recipe.
That is a very skilled little dog
There have been many things to adapt to for me since moving from France to Australia, and this is the beginning of an attempt to explain.
Sometimes I say things to my delicious Christian that are perfectly natural to me (direct translations from French or even French words when I don’t find an equivalent) – and find out very quickly if they don’t make any sense.
Our little dog Mira does this adorable thing when she’s excited: she does little jumps while spinning 360º. One day I observed, got amused (and melted a little on the inside), turned to Christian and said: ‘Oh look! She’s doing a little tourniquet!’.
He blinked. Several times. Then: ‘She truly is a very skilled little dog, if she can do that kind of medical procedure.’
Turns out, when you English speakers use the word you mean bandaging to stop bleeding*. Not quite what I was trying to say. Or what Mira was actually doing. But now Christian and I are on the same page. So when I say ‘tourniquet’, he doesn’t blink anymore.
*The word in French can also mean that, but it’s not its primary meaning. Think turnstile in the Parisian métro that spins and lets people through one by one. That’s what I was going for.
Puppy snooze
You know the days you have so much work to do, and you wake up with a nasty, nasty headache? Hello, Thursday.
Maybe I should do like Mira and have a snooze in the sun. Oh wait, there’s not really any sun either. Crap.
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